While no US Federal Agency sees fit to monitor ocean radioactivity in coastal waters, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) [4] has taken on the task of keeping the information flowing in a world of 'promises' that everything will be ok. As WHOI reports this week, scientists have detected the presence of small amounts of radioactivity from the 2011 Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant accident 100 miles (150 km) due west of Eureka, California.
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As WHOI reports, [4]
Since the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant meltdown in 2011, the radioactive plume has traveled west across the Pacific, propelled largely by ocean currents and being diluted along the way. For now, the levels of Fukushima radiation hitting the West Coast is below where one might expect any measurable risk to human health or marine life, according to international health agencies. The findings confirm data earlier this year showing cesium-134 traveled across the Pacific to the coast of Canada.
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"We detected cesium-134, a contaminant from Fukushima, off the northern California coast. The levels are only detectable by sophisticated equipment able to discern minute quantities of radioactivity," said Ken Buesseler, a WHOI marine chemist, who is leading the monitoring effort.
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The amount of cesium-134 reported in these new offshore data is less than 2 Becquerels per cubic meter (the number of decay events per second per 260 gallons of water). This Fukushima-derived cesium is far below where one might expect any measurable risk to human health or marine life, according to international health agencies.
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"We don't know exactly when the Fukushima isotopes will be detectable closer to shore because the mixing of offshore surface waters and coastal waters is hard to predict."
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These results confirm prior data described at a scientific meeting in Honolulu in Feb. 2014 by John Smith, a scientist at Fisheries and Oceans Canada in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, who found similar levels on earlier research cruises off shore of Canada.
Buesseler believes the spread of radioactivity across the Pacific is an evolving situation that demands careful, consistent monitoring of the sort conducted from the Point Sur.
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Because no U.S. federal agency is currently funding monitoring of ocean radioactivity in coastal waters, Buesseler launched a crowd-funded, citizen-science program to engage the public in gathering samples and to provide up-to-date scientific data on the levels of cesium isotopes along the west coast of North America and Hawaii. Since January 2014, when Buesseler launched the program, individuals and groups have collected more than 50 seawater samples and raised funds to have them analyzed. The results of samples collected from Alaska to San Diego and on the North Shore of Hawaii are posted on the website http://OurRadioactiveOcean.org [6].
